“I remember you now,” said he, lifting himself on his elbow. “You stood in the sunrise gathering apples for preserve; you are the nymph of the orchard.”
He fell back, with a sigh of satisfaction. “And your name is Pomona,” said he.
The girl, her capable, work-marked hands lying folded on her knee, sat in absolute stillness; but her heart was beating stormily under the folds of her kerchief.
The sick man’s beard had grown close and fine round chin and cheeks during these long dreams of his. His hair lay in a mass on one shoulder; it had been carefully tied back with a riband, and in all that black setting the pallor of his countenance seemed deathlike. Yet she knew that he was saved. He lay a while, gazing at the beflowered ceiling of the great four-post bed, and by and by his voice came sighing.
“And after that, what hap befell me? Help me to remember.”
“I found you in the wood,” said she, slowly. “You were lying wounded.”
He interrupted her with a sharp cry.
“Enough! I mind me now. Was I alone?”
“Quite alone, my lord.”
“And my sword?”